I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to peer discovery techniques for wireless communication networks.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems or networks are widely deployed to provide various types of communication; for instance, voice and/or data may be provided through wireless communication systems. A typical wireless communication system, or network, can provide multiple users access to one or more shared resources. For instance, a system may use a variety of multiple access techniques such as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), Code Division Multiplexing (CDM), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), and others.
Wireless communication networks are commonly utilized to communicate information regardless of where a user is located (inside or outside a structure) and whether a user is stationary or moving (e.g., in a vehicle, walking). Generally, wireless communication networks are established through a mobile device communicating with a base station, access point, or access router. The access point covers a geographic range or cell and, as the mobile device is operated, it may be moved in and out of these geographic cells.
Some networks can be constructed utilizing solely peer-to-peer communication without utilizing base stations, access points, or access routers. Such networks are sometimes referred to as ad hoc networks. Communication in such networks may, in some cases, be limited to exchanges between devices that are within direct wireless transmission range of each other, while in other cases multi-hop forwarded between non-adjacent devices may be supported. Various techniques may be used to maintain connectivity and/or forwarding information as the topology of the network changes (e.g., as devices join, leave, or move). Some networks can also be constructed utilizing a combination of both peer-to-peer as well as base stations, access points, or access routers.
In a large scale mobile wireless network, particularly a network that includes peer-to-peer communication, a device may frequently come within transmission range of other devices (e.g., the set of potential communication peers over time is large). However, the set of such other devices that a device actually has a need or a desire to communicate with may be much smaller (e.g., a smaller set of known or related communication peers). In general, the smaller set of known or related communication peers that a device has a need or a desire to communicate with is defined by higher layer information (e.g. user affiliations, administrative relationships, applications, and so forth). Each device may be known and/or associated with multiple identifiers and each identifier may only be known to a subset of explicitly related peers. Therefore, to enable all explicitly related peers to discover a particular device, all the identifiers associated with the device should be advertised (e.g., broadcast) to facilitate peer discovery.